Crispin Hull

The T-shirts carried the slogan: “”My Daddy loves me because I’m a tax deduction”.

Though tongue in cheek, the slogan expressed the stereotype. Slobby man not taking much interest in the kids education and care, but just in the money.

This week’s child-care cash rebate, might not change the attitude of fathers (other social changes will do that), but it is certainly a big change in government and bureaucratic thinking.

The claims by (mainly) women to get some sort of equality and justice in the tax system go back a long way.
Continue reading “1993_02_february_child”

There is a superficial similarity, but some crucial differences between the Canadian goods and services tax and the GST proposed by the Opposition.

The similarity is that the tax burden is shifted from income to consumption and that the tax replaces wholesale taxes. This means that exports are no longer taxed, and in theory it encourages saving.

Canada introduced a 7 per cent GST in January, 1991. The Coalition’s tax is set at 15 per cent.

The essential differences are that Canada’s tax is administratively more clumsy on two counts and is easy to avoid on two counts.
Continue reading “1993_02_february_cantax”

A fire destroyed a demountable classroom at Beechworth Primary School in 1960. It was one of several temporary classrooms most of which were still there when I was last in Beechworth some thirty years later.

Anyway, Grade 4 spent half the year in the Congregational Church Hall where Mr Bernaldo struggled away with long division, üThe Pioneers by Frank Hudson from the Victorian Education Department’s üA Fourth Reader, and what was called the Cursive Script.

It was called “”Grade 4”, note.
Continue reading “1993_02_february_bworth”

The retiring Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, Owen Dowling, was married yesterday to Gloria Goodwin at St Paul’s, Manuka.

It was, and it was not, St Paul’s day.

It is St Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians that is cited by those opposing the ordination of women.

The Reverend Vicky Cullen, ordained by Bishop Dowling last month, celebrated the Eurcharist at the service. She was the first woman to do so in St Paul’s. She said it was a privilege and joyous occasion.

The marriage was celebrated by the Reverend Keith McCollim who took St Paul’s letter to the Colossians as the starting point for his address.

And the same letter by St Paul was chosen as the reading.

St Paul’s was packed with nearly 300 people who listened to the celebrants and the couple’s children, Natalie and Gavin Oliver and Matthew and Mary Dowling, lead prayers and the readings.

The couple would not say where they will spend their honeymoon, though “”it will be somewhere quiet,” according to the bride.

Bishop Dowling has had a difficult year in his struggle for the ordination of women. An ordination service planned at the beginning of the year was blocked by the courts. Later the General Synod cleared the way for their ordination and the first women to be ordained in Canberra-Goulburn were admitted to the priesthood by him last month.

Yesterday was the first full day of Bishop Dowling’s retirement. He said after the service, “”We can spend a whole new life together; it’s wonderful.”

The Dowlings will not live in Canberra, though he has been bishop nine years and 27 years in the ministry in the diocese.

Bishop Dowling went on extensive sick leave earlier in the year after charges laid by Victorian police over an alleged incident in Bendigo. These were dropped by the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions who said they were trivial and victimless and not in the public interest given the probable effect on the bishop’s health.

In his address at the service, the Reverend McCollim quoted St Paul: “”Love does not gloss over the past.”

He said there were three dimensions of love to be considered: the past, the present and the future.

“”Any love that cannot face all three does not merit our consideration today, or for that matter any day,” he said. “”In any marriage, let alone a remarriage, love encounters those darker times of bygone events where failure, selfishness or weakness may well have been experienced. St Paul reminds us that “love keeps no score of wrongs. does not gloat over others’ sins.”

On present love he said the “”now generation” had resulted in too high expectations of marraige that could almost ensure disappointment and disillusionment. But “”true love will neither founder on the rocks of past failure, nor invest all it’s capital in the present experience. There is always more to come”.

He said “”Gloria and Owen now find themselves at a new beginning.”

After the service, Owen Dowling stepped out into the blinding sunshine with his bride for photographs and greet well-wishers on the lawns outside St Paul’s.

There is an enormous commotion with television cameras whirring and a tussle between the thugs, the security guards and the musician. Finally, two burly New York cops arrive. The KGB men immediately say the musician is Russian, he must go with them to the airport back to Moscow.

At which, one of the cops says: “”This is New York. The man can go where he likes.”

It was an earthy expression of the presumption of freedom _ a presumption that is being sadly eroded in Australia.
Continue reading “1993_01_january_column25”

Inconsistency and genteel hypocrisy surround the new racial vilification law now before the Federal Parliament.

The Bill amends the Crimes Act and the Racial Discrimination Act. The first makes it an offence (penalty one year’s jail) to commit a public act that is racially offensive. Racially offensive means an act “”likely, in all the circumstances, to stir up hatred against a person or group of persons on the ground of race, colour or national or ethnic origin”. Public act is defined as communicating words, sounds or images to the public, and includes gestures. There is a further requirement that the accused knows the act is public and is racially offensive.

The change to the Racial Discrimination Act has wider definition of racial vilification, however, the remedy is different. Vilification is not an offence, but the aggrieved person can seek conciliation before the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. In this Act, racial vilification is knowingly or recklessly doing a public act that is likely to stir up hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule. No actual intention is necessary.
Continue reading “1993_01_january_column18”

Is Australia’s best month, certainly on the eastern seaboard. Daylight saving. The beach. Cricket. And the cocooning of politicians. Wrangles over One Nation and Fightback II are deflected gently to the boundary. No elections are held in January. No unionist leaders agitate for strikes. Big bosses go on leave and enterprises run less frenetically. January is the lucky month in the lucky country.

How fortuitous (it’s original meaning) it is that we mark in January two of the most significant days in this land’s history: January 26, 1788, and January 1, 1901. We can consider these national days in a time of leisure and at a time when it very difficult time for journalists to think of anything to write about at all.

I have a proposal. When the pollies come back, talk of the republic will resume. Opinion polls are showing increasing support for a republic, but people seem worried about how exactly it will work. They are worried that the American system will be introduced or that a President could assume unto himself or herself great powers repugnant to our love of liberty etc.
Continue reading “1993_01_january_column11”

Recalling Parliament just so the Government can chuck mud at the Leader of the Opposition under parliamentary privilege seems a very expensive way of going about things.

It is an admission by the Government of one of two things. Either the Government wants to say things which are untrue or unfair about Dr Hewson’s tax and business affairs or it has to admit that the defamation laws prevent legitimate discussion of matters of fundamental importance to the Australian people as they come to make a decision at a Federal election.

I think the latter is the case. The Government wants to comment about Dr Hewson but cannot because Australia’s idiotic defamation laws are too restrictive. Those laws define fair comment too restrictively, let lawyers extract all sorts of defamatory imputations out of words which say no such thing, and are burdened with staggering amounts of costly legal farnarkling that shackle free speech.
Continue reading “1993_01_january_column4”

Have nothing to be proud of when surveying, yet again, record low rod-toll figures for 1992.

ACT figures are no measure because of its small population, but in NSW the toll of 650 was the lowest in 42 years, 13 down on last year and way down on the 1067 in 1985. Other states have shown similar falls.

However, we cannot pat ourselves on the back and say what wonderful, sensible, careful, caring drivers we have been through the year.
Continue reading “1993_01_january_column1”

On census night, August 6, 1991, 280,095 people were counted in the ACT and Jervis bay, according to figures issued yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

It was up 12.3 per cent on the previous census in 1986.

Tuggeranong was up 44.7 per cent, Woden 6.3, Central 6.0, Belconnen 5.2, and Weston -4.7.

On census night, 60.0 of those counted in the ACT a Jervis Bay were under 35 and 6.1 were 65 or over.